Sanskrit Grammar in Early Modern East Asia-a Study of Kiben's Guidelines for Studying the Eight Cases of the Chinese Language

梵文文法學在近世東亞－《漢語八囀聲學則》的初探

孫亞柏(ZAMORSKI, Jakub)

《佛光學報》 新5卷1期 (2019/01) Pp. 267-306

摘要

The present article is a preliminary study of a little known treatise called Kango hattenshō gakusoku 漢語八囀聲學則 (Guidelines for Studying the Eight Cases of the Chinese Language) written by Kiben (基辨, 1718-1792), a scholarly priest of the Japanese Buddhist Hossō school. The concept of ＂eight cases＂ is derived from medieval Chinese accounts of Sanskrit grammar where it refers to the patterns of noun declension. However, Kiben did not apply this category to Sanskrit, but rather to literary Chinese (kango 漢語), the language of Buddhist sutras and doctrinal treatises studied by contemporaneous Japanese monks. Whereas this idea may appear questionable from a linguistic point of view, Kiben's treatise deserves attention as the product of a well-established intellectual tradition rooted in the historical context of early modern Japan. The present article aims to make clear why someone working within this tradition decided to turn to ancient Indian grammatical theory in a creative way that appears so unusual. It will attempt to extract the author's main argument from the philological technicalities in which it is seated and to analyse it from the viewpoint of intellectual history-namely, the inspirations Kiben received from his predecessors, his polemical targets, and the reactions of his target audience. It is argued that Kiben regarded the eight cases as universal categories common to all languages and believed that knowledge of these categories could aid Japanese exegetes in reconstructing the true meaning of the Chinese texts they studied. In this way he related the study of grammar to some of the most important intellectual trends of his age: the development of distinctly Japanese methods of philological inquiry into Chinese texts and of distinctly Japanese interpretations of the shared East Asian tradition. For this reason, this obscure work represents a remarkable attempt at ＂domesticating＂ the Indian tradition of linguistics in the intellectual setting of early modern East Asia.

關鍵字

Kiben ； eight cases ； Hossō school ； Buddhist hermeneutics ； Edo period

並列摘要

本文意旨在介紹由日本法相宗學僧基辨(1718-1792)所撰寫的《漢語八囀聲學則》。「八囀」這一概念源於唐代中國僧人對於梵文語法的敘述，原來指稱的是梵文名詞變化的模式。然而，基辨將「八囀」這一概念用於「漢語」，也就是當時東亞佛教的共同經典語言，而非梵語。雖然由語言學的角度而言，基辨的觀點頗有商榷之餘地，但他的著作代表著當時日本佛教根深蒂固的知識傳統，因此仍值得當代學者的注意。本文所關心的議題是：身為近世日本高僧的基辨對古老印度文法學採取如此創新的運用方式，其目標到底何在？為了回答此問題，本文將不對基辨的文法理解加以太細節的分析，而從思想史的角度來探討《漢語八囀聲學則》的核心論點，包括基辨從前人留下的文獻中得到的靈感，主要的辯論目標以及當時讀者對「漢語八囀」學說的反應。本文認為基辨將「八囀」解釋成某種跨越語言差別的普遍分類方式；據他而言，只有熟悉這些分類方式的日本讀者才能夠精確地掌握「漢語」文本的原義。當時日本有不少學者企圖對漢語文獻採取新的解讀方式或提出新的詮釋，而基辨將文法學連結到當時日本的主流思潮。因此，《漢語八囀聲學則》這本鮮為人知的著作可被視為一項近世東亞將印度文法學「本土化」的出色嘗試。

並列關鍵字

基辨 ； 八囀聲 ； 法相宗 ； 佛教詮釋學 ； 江戶時代

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